1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a configuration information management apparatus, a configuration information management program, and a configuration information management method for managing the configuration items of an IT (information technology) system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the IT service field, the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) has become a common international operating management standard. The ITIL is an international standard specification about the operation management of IT services, and aims at improving the quality of IT services, reducing a necessary cost for an IT system from intermediate- and long-term points of view, etc. A CMDB (configuration management database) is a database for management of configuration items of an IT system, and a component as a kernel of the ITIL. The establishment of the integrated structure of data has been required in automating the operation of an IT system and producing a model of a business process while a corporation is observing various laws and regulations. To attain the objective, the CMDB is important as a kernel of necessary components.
The CMDB supports understanding the relationship among the configuration items of an IT system to manage the system configuration. In the CMDB, a configuration item is referred to as a CI, the CI and the details of its property are managed, and the relationship among the CIs are managed. A CI practically refers to resources such as hardware, software, etc. configuring an IT system. For example, the hardware can be a server, a storage device, a switch, etc., and the software can be an OS (operating system), application software, etc.
A CI manages a component as a set of a “property” and a “property:value”. The property of the CI can be “equipment”, a “role”, etc. and additionally “model number of entire equipment” (for example, the model number of a server in case of a server), “CPU model number” (model number of the CPU provided for a server), “model number of a network card”, “software installed into a server, a client terminal, etc.”, “a port number used for network related software”, etc. Thus, the property of the CI corresponds to “all setting information about software/hardware” relating to the equipment.
A case database in which a pair of a property having a different value depending on a case and the value of the property (property value) is stored is known as a technique relating to the present invention (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. H8-147166 of Japanese Patent Office).
At present, relating to a CMDB, there is a request to record detailed know-how for each CI as a management unit. However, detailed know-how is registered at random for each CI, and the know-how is not shared at present because the know-how is recorded for each CI on each site. For example, in the case of a PROXY server, although there is the know-how specific to the PROXY server, the know-how is registered for the specific CI only, and is not realized to be shared.
FIG. 1 shows the concept of an example in which know-how is not shared.
In FIG. 1, the following three CIs 1001 through 1003 are shown.                CI 1001 (equipment: PRIMERGY BX 620 S4, role: PROXY server)        CI 1002 (equipment: PRIMERGY BX 620 S4, role: file server)        CI 1003 (equipment: PRIMERGY BX 100 S4, role: PROXY server)        
Here “equipment” and “role” are properties, and the product name such as “PRIMERGY BX 620 S4” etc. and the role of the server such as “file server” etc. are properties. Hereinafter, the property value is referred to as “value” for convenience. Therefore, two sets of “property:value” are registered in each of the CI 1001 through 1003. Additionally, the CI 1001 stores know-how 2001 and 2004, and the CI 1002 stores know-how 2002. The CI 1003 stores know-how 2004.
Describing know-how for a set of “property:value” stored in a CI can be considered as a method for solving the above-mentioned situation. However, the conventional CMDB has no data structure for realizing the above-mentioned description of know-how. FIG. 2 shows the data structure of the conventional CMDB.
As shown in FIG. 2, the current CMDB stores in one CI a plurality of sets of “property:value” (in this example, “property 1: value 1”, “property 2: value 2”, . . . , and “equipment: PRIMERGY BX 620 S4”), and the know-how about any set of “property:value” stored in the CI is stored in the format similar to that of the property without linking to the set of “property:value”. Therefore, the current CMDB cannot associate the set of “property:value” with know-how in advance. That is, know-how can be stored in the CI, but it cannot be stored with a related property specified in advance.
In addition, the current IT system can include the know-how about a plurality of sets of “property:value”, but the conventional CMDB cannot associate common know-how with the plurality of sets of “property:value”. For example, the know-how that “the server as “PRIMERGY” and a “PROXY server” is provided with the know-how” cannot be stored in the conventional CMDB.